


Hopscotch on Hope Street

by jerseydevious



Series: Earth-JD [2]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: (pre-crisis that no one asked for), Gen, more of that second thing actually, the joe chill of good writing declared me an enemy of the state and murdered me at quiznos, there's tea and bruce being weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 04:11:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13756029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/pseuds/jerseydevious
Summary: Leslie Thompkins meets Batman for the first time.





	Hopscotch on Hope Street

**Author's Note:**

> If you've read it, you'll know I essentially stole this from, "There is No Hope in Crime Alley," which is the issue of Leslie's introduction and coincidentally the best Leslie. You know you love that cute old woman, with her green scarf and purple dress. 
> 
> Here's a quick thing to introduce Leslie into my private hellworld, hope you enjoy :)

Now, the first thing every Gothamite knew was that the Batman didn’t exist. The Justice Society of America was one thing; the Green Lantern was a stretch of the imagination, but he existed and lived in the flesh. Even if some people argued he was a hoax, those people usually then followed their argument by saying the moon landing was also a hoax, and that was about when most people stopped listening. The Justice Society was one thing.

But everyone knew the Batman wasn’t real. The Batman was their boogeyman. The Batman was Gotham’s personal folktale, passed down as a fear tactic from the rich men who had carved the city up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Lions had manes to make them look bigger; mobsters had bats to make them look scarier. A mistruth here and there could be very useful. No one would mess with the man that claimed to hold the Batman’s leash, because criminals were a cowardly and superstitious lot, who responded most readily to the metallic taste of fear. It was exciting to have a story of their own, so no Gothamite paid any attention when the GCPD started booking low-level Falcone contacts, because that wasn’t part of the story. They didn’t pay attention when the GCPD started booking higher-ranking affiliates. They didn’t pay attention when the old crime families started to crack under unseen pressure. Everyone knew the Batman wasn’t real, anyway.

And because everyone knew the Batman wasn’t real, he was the one thing no one could shut up about. One month, everyone was certain he had fangs as long as a man’s forearm, and then the next it was the talons that were as long as a man’s forearm, and the fangs were somewhat unimpressive by comparison. The going argument was that the Batman was a vampire bat that had fallen in the Miller Bay and was mutated by the toxic pollution, which had replaced the idea that the gargoyles that hung from the Robert H. Kane Memorial Bridge were molded with the spirits of the people who’d died constructing it, and one of them had been brought to life by an errant strike of lightning. The Batman’s birth was a subject of hot debate, traded at cash registers, waiting lines, dinner tables, and schoolyards.

The only story that was never rewritten was the place where the Batman belonged. Everyone knew the Batman had to live in Crime Alley. It was just logic; nowhere else in Gotham City was ever quiet. New Yorkers lived in New York because they thought Gotham was too busy. Everyone who lived across the bay, in sleepy Metropolis, thought that Gothamites had far too much get-up-and-go, but sometimes even they liked to cross the water to get a taste of Gotham’s infinite party. By night the streets of the city were packed like it was a carnival, and neon lights would flood the pavement like water and the music would roll like thunder and the city would dance like the wind to its own hard beat. Gotham pressed in around a person, and for that, people flocked to it. In that busy city by the sea, no one was ever alone, and no one was ever silent, and that was all anyone ever wanted.

But Crime Alley had been a graveyard since 1971. After Martha and Thomas Wayne were shot, no one walked by Park Row; they walked around it, or not at all. It was quiet there even on Fridays, on Saturdays, when the rest of the city roared with life; some swore the alley was haunted, which meant foolish kids would stand at the alley’s lip and dare each other to run quick to the other side. _Just take a step. Just do it, pansy._ If someone were to turn their head and peer down the alley in broad daylight, squint, tilt their head the right way, they could still see the blood on the pavement. No amount of tears from Gotham’s sky could wash that stain away. The Waynes had once been symbols of Gotham’s elusive, mythical Golden Age; now their death was a stain on the city’s skin. If the Batman had to live anywhere, it would be there, the home of the ghost of what the city could have been long ago.

Leslie Thompkins was the only person in Gotham City who knew the Batman was real, and that he also probably didn’t live in Crime Alley, but he was sure there often enough.

She lived in her old family home that pressed close to the street, sandwiched between a barber shop and a sub place; the paint was pale blue and chipping, the windows dusty and faded. She had played in that alley as a kid. She had lived hip-to-hip with Crime Alley all of her life, and now refused to call it anything other than Park Row. Since she’d returned from Africa about a year ago, she had started running a small clinic from her family home, and the influx of patients increased steadily as the nights wore on; she did not ask questions, she did not pass judgements. And always there was the Batman, who came frequently to the alley; she saw him from her window, folded quietly into the shadow, or she saw the tail end of a cape (she was reasonably certain it wasn’t a wing) disappear into one valley of shadow or another. It felt like he was watching her, sometimes, but Leslie felt that might just be the way he looked. Often, there would be medical supplies left at her door, with a bat scribbled on a note. How he knew what she needed, she didn’t dare to guess.

Perhaps what kept the Batman’s cool presence from sending her into a frenzied panic was the fact that he always hung just close enough that he wanted her to know he was there, and just far enough to not have to interact with her. It was almost as if he were keeping his distance out of his own fear, but how such a man (presumably) could feel afraid of Leslie Thompkins, who could scarcely clear five feet tall, and had a grandmother’s portliness to her, was beyond her. She didn’t try to approach; he would come to her, if he wanted. Whatever purpose the Batman had, whatever reason for seeking her out, it would come to light eventually.

The light came on the 26th of June. Leslie had slid her groceries over her arm, and was flipping through an old newspaper with an absent mind; the Dow Jones average was at a record high, the Zodiac killer had taken his third victim, the Women’s Bowling Open was won by Dana Miller-Mackie. She didn’t hear him when he spoke, at first, absorbed in the banality of the soft summer night and the rising-falling of the world’s tide. It took her a minute to realize why the water had gone still around her.

When she turned, the Batman was standing at the mouth of the alley, white, reflective eyes utterly impassive. The dark swirl of the shadows seemed to imply he was crouching, just slightly, as if startled. “Miss Thompkins,” he repeated. She must’ve stumbled across him staring blankly at the the concrete, which he did often. She’d call it brooding if she had reason to think he was prone to brooding, but somehow that seemed too human.

Leslie blinked. Since the Batman had, according to the gossip, drug himself out of the frothy waters of the Miller Bay, and started flitting about Park Row like a moth to a streetlight, she had been waiting for the moment he finally spoke to her. Now, she realized she had never thought about what she would say. He was unsettling in a way that disrupted thought; the fear was always on the surface of the brain, as oil on water, when he was near.

“Hello,” she said. “You’re… the Batman.”

“Is that what they call me,” he said. It was a question that failed to have the inflection of one, as if his voice was only capable of that low, dark tone.

Leslie squirmed. “You don’t get a lot of news, do you? Spending too much time hiding in this alley, I think.”

“The clinic,” he said, slowly. “It’s yours.”

“Well, yes,” she replied. “It has my name on it.”

“Why?”

Leslie jerked back, as if the question had physically struck her. “What does that mean?”

The Batman was silent for a long moment, but she could feel him simmering, puzzling something out, there in that darkness. In the distance, an ambulance shrieked, and as if by instinct he jolted towards it. But he remained still. “The clinic. Why do you run it.”

Leslie shifted. “Batman,” she said, still getting used to the taste of the word, “this might be a conversation better held inside.”  
  
She didn’t allow herself to consider the ramifications of inviting the Batman into her home. She shuffled up her doorstep without waiting for him, which was just as well, because when she flicked her kitchen light on, Batman was sliding through her window, slick as a panther. In the yellow light of her old, floral-patterned kitchen, he looked distinctly uncomfortable, but dangerous still. Leslie looked at him and thought of a collared tiger.

“Well,” she said, awkwardly straightening her sweater and her bonnet and her sleeves. “You can sit down. Just move that box off the chair, thank you, put them by the door with the rest.”

Batman lifted the box of manilla folders and set it down by the door, taking a moment to peer at them; not long enough to imply malicious intent, but just a hair too long for her liking. He sat in the chair stiffly, the scalloped tips of his cape fluttering to the floor. It occurred to her that maybe he hadn’t prepared for this, either.

“Tea?” she asked. “Do… I don’t rightly know if you can drink tea, actually.”

“No thank you,” he said. He avoided comment on whether he could, in fact, drink tea, which Leslie thought was a bit alarming. She’d read something about vampires having to be invited into homes, that they couldn’t walk in without permission, and for a moment was gripped by the same primal fear anyone feels when they’ve made a connection that doesn’t truly exist. Always, there was that fear with him, like oil over water.

She was silent for a beat before she realized that he was waiting on her reply. “My clinic,” she said, pouring tea from her rose-patterned pitcher over ice. “Why would you want to know about my clinic?”

“I am curious.”

Leslie raised one brow. “That’s not an answer.”

“To you,” he said. His voice darkened. “But it’s all the answer I need.”

Leslie shivered. When she spoke again, her voice had lost some of its strength, had wilted some. “I grew up here, in this house. My dad cut marks into the doorframe upstairs with his pocket knife to mark how tall I got every year, and they’ll be up there forever. This is my home.”

“I knew that.” He said to her startled expression, “I do my research. But I don’t think that’s the reason why.”

“It’s all the reason I need,” she parroted snidely.

He continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “Gotham City is my home. But that’s not why I do what I do. Crime Alley is your home. That’s not why you fight for it.”

“Park Row,” Leslie corrected. “That street sign still says Park Row, and you’ll call it by its name.”

Batman inclined his head. “Park Row.”

Leslie took one long, deep drink from her tea, letting the cool sweetness sink down her throat. “When I was a younger woman, after my parents had retired to a house miles away from the city, they gave it to me. It was night. I was walking home. It was a hot night, too, and I was trying to get home fast. Well, on the other side of Park Row is a theater, a family-owned place, and they show a lot of re-runs of movies. So—”

“I know,” Batman said, softly. “About the theater. I’ve been.”

Leslie snorted. “Not in a while, you haven’t. They closed down."  
  
“Did they really,” Batman asked, and again, it failed to be a question. But it was very, very quiet.

Leslie nodded. “It was ugly business. Whole family had to move in with a cousin in Old Gotham, all sandwiched in the same apartment. And it was because of what happened there, in Park Row. No one can bring themselves to touch Park Row with a ten-foot pole and a gas mask. And I saw it all happen.”

She stopped, sighed, stared into her tea so she didn’t have to look at him. “Have you ever seen something that just left you heartbroke? Just hurt. You think about it, and your chest feels all funny, and you shiver. That sort of thing.”

“Yes,” Batman replied. His voice kept that curious softness, like velvet. “Like you’ve been… shot.”

“Exactly,” Leslie said. “Exactly like that. I was walking home that night, and I see this couple and their son and another man in this alley. I got a cold chill, and then I heard the gun. It went off twice. I was struck dumb, hiding behind the wall, fearing for my life. The gun didn’t go off again, but I heard the man—the murderer—talking to the kid in the alley. ‘Stop looking at me like that,’ he said, the coward. The man ran. And I leaned over the corner to look, almost to make sure it had actually happened, and there’s this boy. He’s young. And the look on his face could freeze Hell itself.”

She stopped, setting her cup on the counter she leaned against. “I called the police before going over to the kid. I was still in shock myself—I mean, I played hopscotch in that alley. I had recognized him, by that point, because no one in Gotham didn’t know what the Waynes looked like—why, they were practically our Kennedys, looking back on it. I didn’t know what I could do. So I sat beside him, and I just started talking. It sounds awful, I know, but I didn’t want to touch him and set him off, I didn’t want to drag him away, I just wanted him to stop staring like that. I tried talking to him, about anything and everything, until the police showed up. They ended up dragging him off, and good Lord, the screams—I’m sorry. That’s not the point.

“I saw that. I saw all of it. I was just heartbroke. And maybe it’s childish, but I decided I never wanted to see something like that again. I’ll never even know if I helped that poor kid at all,” she finished. “But you knew all this, didn’t you. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here on the anniversary of it.”

“I could… extrapolate,” he said. She wondered if he ever stopped sounding like a dusty dictionary in a funny hat. “I wanted to hear it from you.”

“Well, you did,” she muttered. “Thank you, really. I always enjoy talking about this in my downtime, of course.”

“It… is complicated,” he said, finally. “I’m sorry.”

She scowled at him. “Don’t apologize if you won’t even tell me why you wanted to know.”  
  
He stood, but stopped by the window, one gloved hand gracing the eggshell frame. “I think the work you do here is commendable. I think my city needs more people like you. My interest was… personal.”

She sighed, and pushed herself off the counter, gesturing Batman to come forward. “No, no. You’re walking out my front door like a normal person. I’ll have none of that sneaking nonsense, do you understand me?”

Batman stilled, and again she marched off without waiting to see if he was following her. She swung open her heavy wood front door, pushed open the screen, and was grateful when she turned to see Batman standing behind her in the foyer. She didn’t care to analyze why she was grateful. He looked menacing still, but it was more of an endearing kind of menacing, the way lions and tigers are doted upon enough for men to shackle them with collars.

“Go on,” she said, holding the door for him. “Let me get some rest.”

He stopped again, looming over her. The white flashes of his eyes were unnaturally bright in the darkness the rest of him was swallowed by. “For what it’s worth. I think… I think Bruce Wayne was grateful. Is grateful.”

Leslie thought his stammering was also endearing, and couldn’t smother the urge to smile up at him. “I’m starting to get the idea that you think too much.”

Batman stooped down, slowly to give her warning, and pressed a kiss to her crown. “You are the hope of Park Row, Miss Thompkins. Take care.”

Then he was gone, sliding back into the night that was the place he belonged, returned to his home. She stood in her door, utterly flabbergasted, for at least twenty minutes, before returning to her own home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> What Bruce says at the end there is almost a direct quote from the original comic. And so is the forehead kiss! That one's canon, so no one start hollering and tossing pitchforks at me for making Batman too soft. I swear, I'll write him doing something badass at some point. For now you'll take your worldbuilding and you'll like it. (Hopefully, hah.)
> 
> Also I posted this from my phone and I am _not_ going through the hell of formatting before I've even had my coffee, so just imagine shit's in italics and I'll fix it later
> 
> As usual, I'm jerseydevious on Tumblr if you got questions (or love letters, I take those too)


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